Premier Dr. Ewart Brown's decision last week to arbitrarily accept four Uighurs into Bermuda without consulting his Cabinet, MPs, Parliament or the British Government may well spell the end of his tenure as the Island's leader. So far, his attempts to defend the decision as a purely humanitarian one are not working. The idea that those "who can help, should help" is admirable, but the reality is that no nation can help all those it would like to; in a world full of suffering, where do you start and where do you stop?

This newspaper is not qualified to determine whether the Uighurs are genuinely innocent or not. But, with the greatest respect, Public Safety Minister Sen. David Burch and Commissioner of Police George Jackson, who apparently did their security assessment, are not qualified either. They are not experts on international intelligence or terrorism. It would be interesting to know if the Commissioner's assessment was supported by the research of his own service. Other countries with much more sophisticated intelligence apparatuses than this one, including Germany, have said they are not satisfied with the level of information which they were given by the US and therefore turned down the Uighurs.

Dr. Brown's decision to bring the Uighurs to Bermuda was never purely altruistic or disinterested. Dr. Brown hoped to improve Bermuda's relations with the US, and especially the White House. By helping that country get out of its self-made problem of what to do with the people it picked up in Afghanistan under dubious circumstances, whom its own courts ruled were illegally detained and should not remain in Guantánamo Bay, but whom their own legislators would not accept in the US, Dr. Brown hoped to get favours in return. Whether the US Congress was right to refuse entry to the Uighurs (a condition that still stands) is not the point either; at least Congress had some say in that decision, rightly or wrongly. Bermuda's elected representatives had none.

And it is also clear that Dr. Brown made the offer to the US, having, he told CNN, read about the Uighurs in the Washington Post. Bermuda was not asked to do this. Dr. Brown volunteered Bermuda's services, again without consulting anyone.

That secrecy, which both Dr. Brown and Sen. Burch claimed was so essential, was not designed to help the Uighurs or Bermuda. It was deliberately designed to give the US cover, and worse, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation, to keep the UK out of the picture. Why? Because the British would have objected to one of its overseas territories jeopardising its relationship with China by taking in the Uighurs. And the British intelligence services would have done a more rigorous security assessment than the Bermuda authorities. By not informing the British, Dr. Brown has poisoned Britain's relations with this island. How can the British deal in good faith with Dr. Brown now?

The idea that this is a simple immigration matter should be overturned as well; it is surely obvious that this has security and foreign relations ramifications that are much bigger than Bermuda.

And where does Bermuda's relationship with China stand? Not 12 months ago, Dr. Brown was trumpeting the importance of encouraging tourists from the world's fastest growing economy to come to Bermuda and he wanted to get Bermuda made an approved destination. Presumably that won't be happening now. More importantly, this move may jeopardise the position of the hundreds of Hong Kong businesses that have established domiciles in Bermuda but continue to do the bulk of their business in China. Was any consideration given to them when this decision was made?

But that's not the worst of it. This is: Dr. Brown deliberately took these decisions without consulting his Cabinet, without consulting the MPs whose majority in Parliament enable him to be Premier, and without consulting the Parliament elected to represent the public. Dr. Brown has been accused of being dictatorial in the past. This time he has fulfilled those accusations.

Last week, President Barack Obama thanked Dr. Brown for doing "the right thing" for the United States. Now it is time for Dr. Brown to do the right thing for Bermuda. He should resign.